


We're All Alright, We're All Alright

by impulse_baker



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Lies, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Therapist Castiel, Trans Male Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 23:48:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16862287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impulse_baker/pseuds/impulse_baker
Summary: Based on a Tumblr prompt I saw ages and eons ago that I haven't been able to shake: For every lie you tell, you get a scar.***please read beginning notes for TRIGGER WARNING***





	We're All Alright, We're All Alright

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: There is reference to underage non-con. It is never explicitly discussed, nor do I include graphic details, but it is a very present element to the story. There is a reference of his body dysphoria. There is a lot of self harm.  
> If any of these things cause you distress or pain or you just don't like those things in your reading, please turn back now.

A scar for every lie you tell. That’s how the world worked. From the age of ten on, every lie shows up on your skin. Deanna wasn’t sure why a kid gets scarred for little lies. What dark thing could they hide that is work marring their skin? That’s how he thought, anyway. Way before he turned ten, that’s how he thought. He was sure that no child could have something like that to hide that a lie became punishable.

 _“It’s just how it is, Deanna, so don’t tell lies.”_ His father was never one for thorough explanation.

He didn’t understand the scars, the cuts. He got his first one before even telling a lie.

It started a year before he could get hurt for lying. When it started, he didn’t understand what he was being hurt for. He didn’t know why he was prying Deanna’s legs apart and pinning him down and clamping his screams away.

His first cut, his first scar was in the shape of an adult’s canine tooth, just below the rise of his collarbone.

He remembers his first lie-scar. The day after his tenth birthday his mother placed a fat stack of pancakes in front of him.

“How did you sleep last night, Deanna honey?”

“Fine.”

Dean felt it slow sear across his left hip where a bruise was blooming from being grabbed too tight the night before.

He was fascinated by the cuts different lies resulted in. Little white lies gave papercuts and the scars were only noticeable by the wearer.

The deeper the lie, the deeper the cut, so it seemed.

This raised the question, what if you didn’t know you were lying? What if you truly believed your lie?

He became obsessed. He had to know how far he could go with falsehoods.

 

“The sky is green.” A wiggled papercut.

“I don’t like apples.” Another papercut.

“I don’t want a dog, Sam.” It felt like he had cut himself peeling fruit.

 

His mother would tut at all his scars. She would lecture him on honesty. She wanted him to know that the truth set one free.

_“The truth is painless, Dea – Dean.”_

But he was a young boy with shimmery green eyes and a face that was _“so pretty”_ and a waistline smaller than his hips, so he knew that to be a lie.

He wondered where all his mother’s scars were hidden.

 

 

Dean was almost eleven when he made one of his biggest discoveries.

His hips ached and his chest was sore and his thighs were tired and his wrists were worn and it hurt to sit and his heart beat shallowly with fear.

His mother remarked on something about him looking ill or upset. Perhaps both. He bore his teeth in a smile.

“I’m fine.”

He finished breakfast hastily, so the blood wouldn’t seep trough the front of his shirt.

He admired the scar tissue that repaired the cut. None of his other wounds were so perfectly jagged.

 

There was blood in his underwear and in the toilet and he knew why. He took longer in the shower that morning scrubbing soap between his legs. He wondered what the scars looked like inside him that he got without saying a word.

For the first time, Dean wondered if those were pains he was inflicted for hiding the truth. Lying by omission.

So then perhaps he deserved this for his cowardice.

He let the showerhead spray his blood and tears and the evidence of his crimes down the drain. He watched it all swirl down. The universe has a way of bringing things back to you, so he didn’t say goodbye.

He knew he’d see them again.

 

 

He turned eleven and he wore black to mourn the year he lost. His mother baked him a cake and he smiled at her efforts. _She loves me._ But the candles flickered over Alistair’s smile in the background and his shadow put out his joy.

“Are you happy today?” Mary asked as she cut his cake.

“I am happy, mom.” He felt a split in his chest reopen as she sliced through a ripe raspberry on top.

He was glad he wore black that day.

 

Alistair stopped visiting him in the middle of the night, and his door stayed closed. But he didn’t know when he would come back. Sleep hardly graced Dean, but when it did, it too was torture. It tied him down and pressed him flat and pushed the breath out of him.

He supposed shadows couldn’t contain screams the same way adult flesh and bone could, because his parents came to him those nights and held his crying, immobile shell.

 _Night terrors_ , they’d call them. He knew it by a different name. A name John and Mary greeted happily during the day. A name allowed in their home.

But they’d never know. Lying by omission.

They would rub his back and promise to protect him.

Dean wondered if maybe the dark kept him from seeing their scars forming. So he asked again in daylight, though he knew the answer.

“Will you always protect me from getting hurt?”

“Of course, baby. Always.” His mother and father bore no new scars that he could see. Neither of them flinched.

He thought maybe he was special in how he received punishment for lying. Or maybe the, too, had grown used to the pain of falsehoods.

 

 

He was fourteen and his teacher asked if he felt safe at home. He didn’t know if it was part of some LGBTQIA+ effort to protect queer kids or what. Maybe the teachers thought he had too many scars for them to all be self inflicted.

“Yes I’m perfectly fine.”

The Chasm, as he grew fond of calling it, grew branches.

 

 

He was sixteen when his friend hugged him and asked him if he was okay, if he needed to talk to her.

“No, I’m okay, really.”

The fissure in his chest deepened and he was afraid the blood would stain her beautiful pale-yellow dress, but luckily it was left clean, even after hugging him so close to her own heart.

 

 

He was seventeen when his cycle was late. It evaded him for three months and although it had been five years and ten months and a week since his last visit, he feared what he was taught to fear, having the body he had.

For the first time, he was glad to see blood in his underwear.

 

After that, Alistair haunted him more He avoided the shower that had no lock. He wore four pants and six pairs of underwear to bed. He told lies to thicken his skin with scar tissue, hoping to grow armor.

 

 

He was nineteen when a friend wished him well on his birthday.

“Congratulations on making it another year!” They laughed and Dean mimed them.

“Yes, thank goodness.”

His Chasm reopened.

 

“No, thank you, I’m fine.”

“I’m okay.”

“Yes, I feel well.”

“I’m fine.”

“No problem, I’m okay.”

“No worries, I’m fine.”

“I’ll be ok.”

“I’ll be fine”

“I’m doing well, thank you.”

“I’m cool.”

“I feel alright, thanks.”

A scar for every lie.

He couldn’t tell his stretch marks apart from the scars.

A cut.

A scar.

A scar.

A cut.

 

 

 

Dean was twenty-two when he met his therapist.

“Lie to me,” he said. “I’ll ask you a question, and I want you to lie.”

This seemed backwards to him.

“I know I’m not the professional here, Doctor Novak, but aren’t I supposed to tell you the truth?”

“You will. And if it would make you more comfortable, you may call me Castiel.”

Simple enough. Dean was a seasoned liar.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fine.” _Cut._

“Are you in pain?”

“Nope, not at all.” _Cut._

“Are you afraid?”

“Of course not.” _Cut._

“Do you love yourself?”

“Yeah, loads.” _Cut._

And for the first time, he flinched. He shed a tear. Then two. But the therapist’s face did not change. There was only a subtle tilt to his head that told Dean there was something going on behind his blue eyes.

“Do you find yourself to be inwardly and outwardly beautiful?”

“Sure, I’m pretty alright.” _Cut. Another tear._

“Do you find yourself worthy?”

“I think so.” _Cut. Tear._

“Is your trauma your own fault?”

“I don’t think so.” _Tear._

Dean wondered when the cut would sear.

“Are you broken?”

“No.” _Tear._

“Are you a good person?”

“Sure.” _Tears._

“Do you deserve to be saved?”

“I do.” _Tears._

“Can good things happen to you?”

“Yeah.” _Tears._

The pain never came.

“Dean Winchester, are you okay?”

For the first time in his life he didn’t have a lie ready for the question. Instead, he cried. He cried and his tears soaked through his shirt and saturated the bloodied front and it burned and he thought of all the times he stood naked in front of a mirror, lying because it hurt and because he knew he could hurt himself ore than Alistair ever could and at least he was in control of that pain and how much it hurt and how long and why and he found his bit of power that no one could take from him.

“Dean, are you okay?”

He met his eyes.

He was a stranger.

His gaze gave nothing away.

He had a powerful pronounced chin but softly proud cheek bones.

His lips were set and chapped.

He had a white scar through his right eyebrow. There was another just over the apple of his left cheek, and yet another just beneath his Adam’s apple.

He brushed a short wild curl behind his ear, exposing the pink welt running from the middle of the fleshiest part of his forearm to his pulse point He moved very slowly to put his hand back in his lap.

“Dean. Are you okay?”

“No,” he whispered.

“Will you let me try to help _you_?”

“I will try to let you try.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” _Cut._ “Kind of,” _Cut._ “Not yet, but I will try. I feel like I could.”

“Do you want to love yourself?”

“I don’t know.” _Cut._

Dean took a breath.

Then another.

“Yes, but I don’t know how.”

“Dean, we will try.”

He didn’t have to search to see he was being honest. He recognized lies, especially worn out ones, and this wasn't that.

“Okay, alright. Fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dean is a trans man. He is referred to as his birth name a few times in the beginning to show the transition to him choosing the right name, and his parents getting used to it. I spoke to a handful of lovely trans friends on Tumblr before writing and posting this, and so I hope I did the experience justice, because while I'm cis, I recognize the need for more representation. Yes, Dean is trans, but this is not the primary source of conflict in this story. One of the things we talked about was how LGBTQIA+ identities were the source or subject of tragedy in most works that address being queer. I didn't want this to be like that. Is this a dark piece? Yeah. But I exclude things like slurs or misgendering because we felt that it was better to depict people around him as accepting his identity, as it should be. Please give me critiques on how to improve. I'm open to talking about anything.  
> The trauma and experiences that are unrelated to gender identity are all mine and I hope to lend some kind of strength or solidarity to people with similar stories.


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